Of Swords and Parasols

This is a fantasy anthology that combines swords and sorcery with things like swashbuckling and highwaymen. It is, obviously, something I was meant to have.

My favorite stories-Madeleine Robins’s “Virtue and the Archangel” and Sherwood Smith’s “The Rule of Engagement”-are the first and last stories respectively. Robins’s story is very reminiscent of her Miss Tolerance books, in which a somewhat silly Lady loses a valuable jewel during a tryst, and asks a woman she went to school with to find it for her, while Smith’s is a take on the “abducted bride” trope that ends in a far from conventional way. I’m also exceptionally fond of Mary Rosenblum’s “Night Wind,”where a young man with a cursed family adds a highwayman to his troubles, and “Lace-Maker, Blade-Taker, Grave-Breaker, Priest,” in which two men who want to kill each other are shipwrecked on an island, but can’t get to the killing thanks to the other survivors. It’s notable, though, that they contain the same twist.

I liked most of the rest of the stories, save for Diana L. Paxson (European man finds himself in the self-actualization sense in ever-so-exotic Peru!), Catherine Asaro (thought it was basically as rather silly romance), and Chaz Bentley’s (relied on my already being attached to the characters from the books, and already understanding their relationship) stories.

I’m thinking I should probably check out more of Norilana’s anthologies.

Ten years ago, Sarah Brereton, a young woman of quality, ran away with her brother’s fencing instructor. Her fencing instructor dead, she’s returned to England, and London, and set herself up as an inquiry agent, striving to avoid the normal (re: prostitution) fate of fallen women whose families won’t take them back.

This is an alternate Regency England in which George III never recovered from his initial bout of madness in 1788, and Queen Charlotte became Regent. Beyond that, Robins sticks to actual history as much as possible, using the shift in history to focus on the status and lives of fallen women of quality.

Hired by a man named Trux to find an antique fan for his employer, whose father gave it to a mistress over twenty years ago. The writing style is reminiscent of the style of the time (and the opening lines are deliberately spun out of the famous opening lines of Pride and Prejudice), but accessible, and while it’s set up as a mystery, it eventually spins into a fullblown adventure with a swashbuckling heroine.

A very fun romp (though I’m rather annoyed that as is typical, women can only have sex with hot rich men with a stated intention of no commitment if the man is actually one of the murderers.) and I’m disappointed that Robins apparently only has three books and isn’t writing more.